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by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Misunderstandings, Pre-Canon, Prince Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:09:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21618910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: “I’ve insulted a planetary ruler,” she says, not meaning to speak the words aloud, but there they go right out of her mouth. Thinning her lips, she wills herself to calm down.It’s okay, Rose. All you have to do is convince Paige it’s time to uproot your life again. Then it’ll be like this never happened. No big deal. He might even let you get off this planet despite offending him.She hates that she feels this way, that she can’t let it roll off her back the way she should. Who cares if she’s insulted him? What’s he going to do: imprison her? They don’t do that here. At least she doesn’t think they do that here. It’s definitely not in keeping with Leia Organa’s ethos. Nobody walks around scared for their lives here; they don’t have to.But they, unlike Rose, haven’t managed to offend a very important, very powerful individual. In fact, they might never have gotten into this position because they, unlike her, would actually care to remember what he looks like.
Relationships: Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/Rose Tico
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47
Collections: Star Wars Rare Pairs Exchange 2019





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**Author's Note:**

  * For [perlaret](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perlaret/gifts).



New Alderaan is nothing like Hays Minor and though Paige keeps trying to tell Rose not to hold that against it, she can’t help but wish that things could be different, that they weren’t forced to flee their home because some jumped up Imperial garbage decided to throw their weight around. The First Order—and that’s rich, given how much chaos they managed to instigate when they arrived—is a scourge and Rose’s first instinct has always been to fight, fight for what’s hers and fight for what’s right. Paige is the same, but Paige is older and maybe just the littlest bit wiser; it’s easier for her to settle and Rose tries not to begrudge her, but envy curls around her heart and squeezes tight every time she thinks about the fact that they might never go home again and even if they could, it won’t be the same without her parents and friends and everyone who made it the place she loves most in all the galaxy no matter how ugly and polluted it became.

*

It’s beautiful here. Rose can admit that much in her heart. That beauty sometimes stops her in her tracks. When she’s on her way to work at the spaceport, when she’s trudging back to the small apartment she and Paige have finally scraped enough credits together to afford, when she’s doing nothing at all, or staring at the sky while she’s having a cup of tea at the little shop Paige favors even though their kaf is superior in every respect. It is, maybe, a stupid way to try to feel closer to her sister when she’s away for her own work, but it works. Sort of.

She might be lonely; she might spend a lot of time at the spaceport, pulling overtime like it’s going out of style instead of acknowledging that fact.

It becomes easy to tell herself that she’s just being responsible, earning as much credits as she can in case something else goes wrong. New Alderaan is stable, more stable than even Hays Minor was; credits might actually be worth a damn if the worst happens even here.

It’s not a big deal, though, all the work she does. She likes the bustle of the spaceport, enjoys seeing the arrivals and departures of cargo ships, pleasure yachts, and run of the mill transports, goes over their specs in her mind to keep sharp when she’s particularly bored. The glut of life here soothes her and it, too, is beautiful in its way, even if deep down inside she wishes her home got the same chance this place does. There’s nobody who’ll set up a New Hays settlement once this fight is through, she doesn’t think.

Besides, there aren’t enough citizens left to justify a settlement. Hays was never heavily populated even before the First Order arrived.

It’s this thought that occupies her through the afternoon on her day off as she pokes and prods at the backlog of ships in need of repairs, ships none of the other mechanics will take because the work is difficult or not particularly lucrative. Old Taisen, the owner, is a soft touch for people, hates saying no to them. Rose doesn’t think too hard about how that’s probably the only reason she gave Rose a job, though Rose has at least paid back that kindness by now. But it means there’s always so much work to do.

It’s lucky for her that Alderaanians are generally patient and will wait for minor repairs as long as they are skillfully, thoughtfully done.

That’s been the one adjustment to her normal workflow that has been a joy to undertake. She still expects someone to yell at her that the job is finished as soon as the thing works again and not a moment later. Here, the work’s not done until the thing works and it’s been polished to a fresh, pristine beauty. Cracks and scrapes in hulls aren’t just filled in with space-worthy epoxies that leave behind ugly scars. They’re filled with epoxies—maybe tinted, maybe not—and then pampered until they’re prettier than they started out.

Rose likes that. She likes being a part of that process. Leaving things in a better condition than they come to you, it’s a good thing, a worthy thing: a goal she’s happy to strive for.

She’s bent over the open panel of a little skimmer of a ship, best for use in low-atmo, a pretty jewel of a vehicle, and she’s not sure who it belongs to, didn’t pay much attention to the work ticket beyond the attachment which carries the diagnostic results done earlier by Y83-BF. There’s a short somewhere in the electronics that’s been troubling her all afternoon and troubled Beef before her.

(Beef isn’t the droid’s name and Taisen doesn’t consider it a dignified enough moniker for her, but Beef likes it and Rose likes it, and what Taisen doesn’t know won’t hurt her.)

The rest of the damage has already been taken care of, minor repairs compared to this. It’s some of Rose’s best work.

It’s soothing, this, not frustrating in the slightest, a fun puzzle to solve.

“It’s giving you a hard time, too, huh?” a voice says from behind her. The cadence and tone is pleasant enough, but there’s a hint of dark amusement in it that suggests its owner bashed their head against the wall of this particular glitch before relinquishing it to someone else.

Rose startles—she’d been so deep into the work that the rest of the world had fallen away from her—and turns sharply, willing her heart to calm as she stares up and then even higher to catch the eyes of the distressingly tall man before her.

He is dressed in white that doesn’t quite suit him, washes out his already pale skin. In recompense, it does also highlight the contrasts in pleasing ways: the handful of dark moles scattered across his skin, the sooty dark eyelashes, the black gleam of his long, braided hair.

Bits of silver flash at his neck and wrists. He is wealthy, but not ostentatiously so.

She feels like she should hate him on principle for being rich and ignoring the protocol which states he shouldn’t make himself at home in the workshop, but there’s a self-aware twist at the corner of his mouth that makes her want to like him instead.

Utter nonsense and probably targeted to make him more likable. She has little enough in common with this kind of person and he’ll be gone as soon as his ship is righted anyway. There’s no point liking him, not even for the span of a moment. In a moment, you can lose anything and everything. In a moment, liking someone could open wounds that will never heal.

“I don’t mind,” she replies, brushing her hand across her forehead. It’s only after she’s done it that she thinks it might be better if she hadn’t. Now she gets to worry that she might have left a streak of oil behind. Then again, it’s better than even odds that she’s already got oil on her face. Deciding ignoring it is the better part of valor, she adds, “You the owner?”

His mouth twitches, teeth glinting bright white against his pink lips. “Something like that.”

She squints at him and isn’t entirely sure where her daring comes from. This is, in a way, her employer, whether he’s the owner on a technicality or not. Still. He’s got the kind of face that invites teasing. Barring that, he’s got the kind of face that ought to be knocked down a peg or two. “Has anyone ever told you that self-deprecation is the refuge of the unimaginative?”

That twitch pulls all the way into a frown and it stops up whatever words he might have hidden behind if she hadn’t decided to call him out like this. She can see the way his thoughts grind to a halt and she’s pleased with herself for causing it. There’s probably no one else on New Alderaan who’s done that. At least, she finds that she wants to flatter herself that this is the case. “No,” he answers, caught off guard, a little less bland than before. Interesting. “I don’t believe anyone has ever said that to me.”

Rose is, perhaps, moderately impressed that he hasn’t scolded her for her cheek and all the more so because she can tell she’s wounded his pride in some small way. _This isn’t how you treat a customer, Tico,_ she thinks, but it’s too late to go back. Now that she’s tested him a bit, though, she’s able to rein it back in. “That’s okay,” she replies, a little awkward. Donning a more professional expression, she adds, “It shouldn’t take much longer.” Though the work order had specified this guy shouldn’t expect to have this transport back for another three days, she finds herself wanting to apologize for the delay. “I can comm you when it’s ready.”

His mouth twitches again and she’s left wondering what words might be hidden behind those soft, pink lips of his. “That might be difficult,” he says finally, mysterious and weird. Who has difficulty accepting comms?

She rolls her eyes once she realizes. Rich people. Always too good for comms. “If you have a personal assistant, I can comm them instead.”

His features darken and he turns away for a moment, drawing in a deep breath as though to steady himself. She’d forgotten: rich people don’t always like to be reminded they’re rich. “That won’t be necessary.”

_What the hell,_ she thinks, annoyed now by how difficult the guy’s being. He’s the one who approached her, not the other way around. If he doesn’t like the options she gives him, that’s his fault. “How can I help you, then? Or do you just want to hover until the job’s done?”

The man blinks at her and then blinks again, silent and wide-eyed.

She hadn’t meant to be quite that abrupt. Maybe. There goes treating the customer as they deserve to be treated. Taisen’s gonna kill her. Wincing, she bites her lip and looks at the ground, wondering how she can salvage the situation now that she’s fully shoved her foot in her mouth.

Then, because this guy is apparently actually the weirdest man on New Alderaan, he laughs lightly and brushes his hands down his sides. His shoulders loosen and his earlier annoyance is entirely wiped away. “I won’t do that to you,” he says, not quite amused, but somewhere in the vicinity of it. “Will you be here tomorrow? I could stop by then. Check your progress.”

When she opens her mouth to tell him it’s her day off, she thinks she sees something like desire in his eyes. Desire for company, maybe. Desire for Rose’s company in particular. She’s never been very good at interacting with other people, but he broadcasts everything he’s feeling, even if she’s not fluent in the language of his expressions to fully understand them. Still. He makes it pretty easy to guess the broad strokes. She might be a little flattered and a little thrill of interest snaps and stretches along the length of her spine, nothing she’ll ever act on, of course, but she’s not above a bit of fun. And anyway, even though it’s true that tomorrow is her day off, she’ll find her way here eventually.

She always does.

“Fine,” she replies, making a shooing gesture. Best to not appear too eager for his attentions. “Stop by in the morning. I’ll be here.”

Later, after she’s gone home, she realizes she never asked him his name and didn’t even think to check the work order to find it out either.

*

He’s there already when she arrives to open the shop, dressed again in white, though a different outfit than yesterday, trousers and a tunic rather than the serious, somber robes he’d worn. There are fewer silver accents, none at all, in fact. If not for how thoroughly useless white is in a mechanic’s shop, he might look like any normal spacer on leave or between jobs. Even the braids are looser, less complicated, more like something a real person would wear going about their real lives in the real galaxy around them. She likes the way it softens his appearance, even if he’s still got steel rammed in his spine to keep him at an uncomfortably upright angle.

What would it take to loosen him up? She flushes as an image or two flashes in her mind.

“You’re early,” she says to his back, secretly pleased. How long has he been here? She’ll have to ask Beef if she knows.

He turns smoothly and easily, much to her disappointment, like he’d heard her approach even though she’d been quiet. “You didn’t specify a time beyond ‘morning.’ It’s morning.”

“So I didn’t,” she agrees, letting him in ahead of her, almost charmed that he would risk this embarrassment instead of doing the reasonable thing and waiting for a later hour when it was more likely she’d be here. “Sorry for the hold up.”

“It’s fine,” he agrees, though there’s a slight tension in his voice that Rose reads as embarrassment. When she looks at him, she sees a splash of red across his cheeks, which confirms it in her mind. It manages to make him look ridiculously young and it leaves her curious to see what he’d do if she pushed it, but she suspects he’s not the sort who’d want to be questioned, so she manages to keep her mouth shut just this once.

“I think I’ve just about got the short,” she says, cheerful, rummaging for the pad with the work order and diagnostics loaded onto it. This time, she’s determined not to let herself be distracted. She’s going to get his name and she’s not going to ask for it. “You can take a seat if you’d like. I can put on some kaf and…?”

And what? Invite him to share breakfast with her? What a joke.

“Okay,” he says.

_Kriff. Way to open your mouth._ She doesn’t scrub her hand over her face, but it’s a very near thing. Despair settles into her heart with every step she takes into this grave she’s dug for herself. Now she has to give him one of the stale pastries she keeps here for when she’s running late and doesn’t have time to fix a proper breakfast and Paige isn’t there to ensure she does what she should. At least the kaf will be okay. That’s the one thing she’ll never compromise on. It might not be ‘rich guy slumming it’ good though.

But he’s the one who said yes. That makes it his fault.

She just needs to find that pad is all, then she’ll get right on presenting him with terrible food and excellent kaf. Where exactly did she put the damned thing? It’s not like her to lose a work order that way. Sighing, she plants her hands on her hips; she can’t keep delaying. ”What’s your name anyway?”

She doesn’t turn away from him quickly enough to avoid seeing the way he goes preternaturally still and stony-faced. The room seems almost to plunge into coldness with her question and she’s not certain what she’s said wrong until he answers after a long, torturous delay. “Ben Organa.”

Ben Organa. Ben Organa, as in crown prince of New Alderaan and de facto ruler of the entire settlement of New Alderaan, so widespread across the planet that it was now stretching to the moon overhead and would possibly begin expanding beyond that soon after. Ben Organa, as in the son of Leia Organa, hero of the Rebellion and persistent thorn in the New Republic and First Order’s side, that Leia Organa. Leia Organa, leader of the Resistance.

The Resistance. Paige sometimes talks about the Resistance like it’s a distant dream.

But there’s no way this is Ben Organa standing in front of her. He’s too tall, isn’t he? He’s not so…

But then she thinks about it, thinks about the handful of times she’s paid enough attention to local politics, and realizes that they do look remarkably alike despite how little ostentation lingers about his person now.

“I’ve insulted a planetary ruler,” she says, not meaning to speak the words aloud, but there they go right out of her mouth. Thinning her lips, she wills herself to calm down. _It’s okay, Rose. All you have to do is convince Paige it’s time to uproot your life again. Then it’ll be like this never happened. No big deal. He might even let you get off this planet despite offending him._ She hates that she feels this way, that she can’t let it roll off her back the way she should. Who cares if she’s insulted him? What’s he going to do: imprison her? They don’t do that here. At least she doesn’t think they do that here. It’s definitely not in keeping with Leia Organa’s ethos. Nobody walks around scared for their lives here; they don’t have to.

But they, unlike Rose, haven’t managed to offend a very important, very powerful individual. In fact, they might never have gotten into this position because they, unlike her, would actually care to remember what he looks like.

“Uh…” Though she’s opened her mouth, she’s not sure how to follow up on it, and all the thoughts tangling within her mind don’t result in anything approaching a coherent statement. She winces and turns away. “Let me get the kaf.” _And maybe a tranquilizer,_ she thinks, a little dark, but knocking herself unconscious might be the least embarrassing thing she could do right now. She wouldn’t be able to shove her entire leg into her mouth if she fell asleep. That would really be for the best, wouldn’t it?

“There’s no need,” he says, cool and clipped, and Rose suddenly finds herself a little annoyed at him, too. Who the hell does he think he is? Not everybody in the galaxy is going to recognize him, are they? So what if Rose is one of them. That doesn’t mean he has to get into a snit about it. Does he expect her to fawn over him? She wouldn’t have done that even if she knew. The only thing that would have been any different is she wouldn’t have teased him so much before. “I shouldn’t have come.”

The sound of his boots against the duracrete is equally cool and clipped, like they’re just as unhappy with Rose as he is.

“Wait!” she calls after him, trying to match his strides and failing. She might as well not be there at all for how much he responds to her shout. By the time she catches up to him, he’s already straddling his swoop bike—and gods, why the hell is he driving one of those, it’s dangerous and stupid and kind of exciting—and halfway through checks because he’s apparently not too cool to do that even if he is trying to get away from her. She’s not going to convince him to stay, she can tell that much. “What about your ship?”

“Taisen knows how to contact the palace.” His tone is such that he seems like he’s purposefully choked all the life out of it. “Have a good day, Miss Tico.”

With that, he speeds off, getting the final word in the most underhanded way imaginable. Still, she yells at the thin scattering of dust his bike picked up from the street, knowing full well he won’t hear her and that it won’t actually make her feel any better. “How am I supposed to do that now?!”

She sits on the curb and crosses her arms over her knees, resting her chin on her forearm. Kriff.

If she puts off finishing work on Ben Organa’s stupid, temperamental ship, she tells herself she’s just exacting payment for emotional damages and also that there’s more pressing work to be done. She tells herself that it’s not even a little bit because she just wants to be petty and was maybe looking forward to watching him destroy the integrity of all that white fabric he decided to wrap his body in to visit a mechanic’s shop and now he’s ruined it because he’s a stuck-up asshole.

She’s definitely not a vindictive person.

Not at all.

After pouting for half a day, she gets to work, determined to succeed and as quickly as possible.

*

She does, in fact, manage to complete the repair and it’s the best work she’s ever done if she says so herself. It’s on time, too, despite her having to pull extra hours just to ensure he will know how much effort she put into it. Even the wiring is now elegantly folded into the panel, as beautiful on the inside as it’s always been on the outside. It is polished and primed and painted to perfection. If nothing else, pride fills her at seeing it done and to exacting standards as well. Ben Organa will be unable to find any fault with it, just as she intends. Though she has no reason to feel guilty, she does anyway. There’s a niggling curl of doubt in the back of her mind that maybe she’s misconstruing something here.

It would be easy to shove it down and chalk it up entirely to weird, rich royalty being weird, rich royalty. That already explains so much about the state of the galaxy after all.

But in truth, she wants it to be more complicated than that. She doesn’t want Ben Organa, awkward, self-deprecating guy who wanders spaceports alone while being the leader of an entire planet to just be a weird, rich, stuffy royal who’s only mad because he wasn’t recognized and fawned over.

She does not ask Taisen to contact the palace to arrange a drop off because she’s not a coward even though she thinks she might vomit once she’s sitting on a crate and tapping out the message to Ben Organa’s stupid assistant that he lied about.

*

She waits and waits and waits for a response, any response from the palace. Her comm has already confirmed receipt of her message through the appropriate channels, so it’s gotten where it’s supposed to. It’s not like she doesn’t know it’ll take time for the arrangement to be made and since nobody’s told her to get her ass down there with the ship herself, she suspects she won’t be asked to have it brought over. Somebody will be sent.

Probably, it’ll be one of Ben’s lackeys, some stodgy royal errand person who has better things to do than pick up Ben Organa’s ship only to transport it maybe a mile at most to whichever private hangar belongs to him.

But she hopes it’s not a lackey.

And the longer she waits, the more she hopes.

He’d only gotten upset once she knew who he was and started behaving differently toward him; she’s pretty sure he liked it when she gave him a hard time. Otherwise, why would he have come back for more? Ergo, he’s mad that she changed because of who he is, not because she’d insulted him.

That’s what she tells herself anyway.

*

She’s made three pots of kaf throughout the course of the day and all of them have grown cold when she hasn’t managed to pawn enough of it off on unsuspecting, yet delighted customers who are probably going to start expecting this kind of treatment all the time. Taisen might kill her for that, but it’s worth it when she’s just made a fourth and hears a throat clearing behind her. Though she’d been holding out for it all day, she still jumps at the noise and turns, hands behind her back, like she’s been caught doing something naughty.

And maybe she has.

He’s dressed even more elaborately than the first time they met. The high-collared robe he wears seems set to strangle him. A truly ridiculous amount of jewelry weighs down his shoulders, his arms, even around his midsection, as though a plain belt just wouldn’t be enough to convey how powerful he is. He doesn’t even look human so much as a statue that’s been expertly carved to replicate a cold and distant humanity, the sort of humanity that turns people into kings and rulers, not normal people, not people like Rose.

She puts that thought to the back of her mind. He’s here, that’s the important thing. He doesn’t have to be. There’s no power in the universe that Rose holds that could make be any place he doesn’t want to be.

Rose doesn’t fidget, but she wants to; her hands tighten into fists at her side as she looks up at him, tries to gauge just how much of a mess she’s made of this.

Ben Organa doesn’t seem particularly impressed with her, that’s for sure. And perhaps he shouldn’t be. She’s a refugee from a planet so far outside of most people’s recollections that it almost doesn’t matter that it exists to anyone who isn’t Rose herself or Paige or any of the few who managed to escape before the First Order started sucking it dry.

But that’s not—there’s not a whole lot yet that she can do about that. One day, she and Paige will get there. The time just isn’t right yet as much as it pains her to even think it. They’ve taken steps—of course they have—petitioned the senate and every local authority they can find who might be able to help. It’s a slow-moving process and it would strangle her with frustration if she let it.

She doesn’t let herself think too hard about how close to the Resistance she found herself before completely blowing it.

For the moment, she’d rather focus on this. Comparatively, it’s easy. What does she have to lose by playing a hunch with Ben Organa, a hope? Make him mad? She’s already done that.

Managing to lift her chin with more than the average degree of trepidation, she says, “About time you showed up,” as though it was a foregone conclusion when in her heart, she’d known no such thing and they both have to know it. It takes every ounce of her attention to not trip over the words. “Your ship, while pretty, is cluttering up my work space.”

Ben says nothing for a moment, does nothing, stands there looking stupefied by her assertion. It’s a good thing Taisen isn’t here to see this. She’d probably shout at Rose for being rude. It’s okay though because Ben’s features flush, all the way to the tips of his ears, and it’s charming despite itself and Rose is determined to make him behave like a normal person, not this creaking, stiff creature who’s only operating on protocol and nothing else. She tries to tell herself that she doesn’t really know him, but somewhere deep in her chest and mind, the same places where Paige so easily slots into place, she feels like she does, or at least like she could.

“There’s an easy solution to that problem,” he says finally, voice a little rough.

She beams despite her nerves. He’s teasing her back. Got to be. Any royalty worth his salt who’s offended by her would’ve scolded her at best or tried to bully her or wouldn’t have come at all. “Yeah, you could’ve picked it up sooner.” _Maybe not run away like last time._ But the important thing is he’s here now and there’s the slightest indication in the twitch of his cheek that he might smile here in a moment.

She would like to see him smile.

As though he’s heard her thought, he ducks his head and brushes his hand across the back of his neck. She tilts her own a little, just to make sure she doesn’t miss anything. And there it is, the very slightest smile she can imagine. Right there. It’s a decent smile, too, and one she wouldn’t mind seeing again.

It raises questions she’d like to see answered. How often does he smile? And when? Who’s managed to make it happen and could Rose be one of those people? It is, perhaps, a romantic notion, more romantic than she’s allowed herself to feel in a long time, but. But. She and Paige have gotten lucky; they’ve found themselves on maybe the most beautiful planet in the galaxy surrounded by people with the leisure time to care about things like… like whether someone often smiles.

It’s probably a bad idea to care at all, knowing how cruel the galaxy can be.

And yet she’s already taken this much of a step. She’s let herself care enough to do something dumb like wait all day with kaf for royalty that might not come.

“Yours is a good solution, I guess,” she says, dredging up as much confidence from within her as possible while simultaneously shoving down all of the anxiety that threaten to trip her tongue, “except I wouldn’t have had a chance to see you again.”

She sends up a prayer of gratitude to every god she doesn’t believe in when the words come out smoothly.

Ben startles, shows everything in his eyes, and Rose is left wondering how he managed to get into politics at all, how he’d grown up as Leia Organa’s kid and avoided picking up any of the poise and steel she carries within her. He looks as ridiculously alone standing there as she sometimes feels when Paige has been gone too long.

A moment later, as he overcomes whatever emotion is inside of him, she revises that statement. It’s not that he’s not made of steel, she thinks. It’s that he doesn’t let that stop him from being exactly who he is, even when it’s going to hurt him. She likes that about him, maybe, feels something like it in herself from time to time. She’s doing this, isn’t she? Despite knowing better, knowing how much more fragile a person is when they care too deeply? 

And there’s that smile again, even better than the first, barely controlled now in a way she hopes might be unique to her.

She’s not above a few of her own vanities, she supposes.

She tells him: “If you think being Ben Organa is going to get you off the hook for breakfast, you’ve got another thing coming.”


End file.
